Smelling the Roses

As my daughter has been learning how to drive the past few months, one of her favorite sayings has become "They needed to slow down and smell the roses anyways." She said this as yet another person rudely passed her because she was going too "slow" (most of the time the speed limit). Two people have even gone so far to pass her in her lane and shove her off the road. She is right in her saying in many ways. We are so busy and have to get to that next appointment that we sometimes even forget the most common courtesies. One observation our family shares with each other each year is how much more rude and pushy people get as Christmas Day closes in on them. You would think it would be the opposite in the "good will to all men" season. Yet, I too am guilty of not stopping and smelling the roses during the holiday season as well as other times of the year.

I was reminded over the weekend of how I even fall into this trap of busyness. On Thursday I tripped in the house and fell managing to bang myself up pretty good. Friday morning, I had to admit that I needed to go get checked out by a doctor. Blood work and CT scan later I was found to not have any internal injuries but had jostled my insides around to the point that I am now on doctors order to take it very easy. I wish I had a more exciting story of how I injured myself but I don't.

The point of all this is was my first thought was how am I going to get everything done before Christmas. Now, that I have had a few days to sit and think about it though I realized I had allowed myself to fall into the busyness trap. I have rethought my position and realized that the recuperation time will allow me to spend some quiet time this year. I will spend more time with the girls doing things here. I have also decided that I will take a much needed break and do some crafting and reading that I enjoy doing.

Hopefully, it will not take a fall to get you to think about what fun things you can do for yourself as well as with family and friends. I would encourage you to think of a couple of things to do that will help you "stop and smell the roses" this holiday season.

Family Day

I have been trying to work really hard at making sure that we have some fun together as a whole family. It has been more difficult as Mary gets older but it is still important. Yesterday was one of those days. As I had blogged on Saturday, we love festival season and try to partake in them as we can. Yesterday, we went to the Spoonbread festival in Berea.

We arrived just in time to find a good place to watch the parade and found a front row seat underneath a shade tree. We watched the crowd and goings on around us as we waited. The parade was definitely a small town parade. All of the local police agencies and firetrucks were represented. There were the typical campaign floats along with old cars, trucks and tractors. A motorcycle club also participated. Of course we saw the local horse club and myriad of beauty queen contingents. The most unusual thing that we saw was the line of old hearses that had been restored by a local funeral home. There were probably 6-8 of them including an old time ambulance equipped with working siren.

After the parade, we walked around and looked at all the booths. There were plenty of different arts and crafts that are always fun to look at. There were the political booths and all the local service organizations giving out there goodies with their names on it. We ended our time there at the local food booths with all our favorite novelties. My husbands was the fried Twinkie and the girls enjoyed splitting a funnel cake. I had a pulled pork sandwich. We began and ended our day listening to a variety of local musical artists. Fun day all in all.

I would encourage you to check out your local festival schedule, find one that looks intriguing and enjoy a day visiting all the fun things that it has to offer. Happy festival hopping!